


An All-Consuming Emptiness

by RedSkiesAtMorning



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Basically they see what the insides of their minds look like, Childhood Memories, Creative Split, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders Angst, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders Needs a Hug, Dubious Fusion Consent, Flashbacks, Gen, Hallucinations, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, If it gets cringy and bad at the end im sorry, Like, Logic | Logan Sanders Angst, Logince can be romantic or platonic, M/M, Memories, Moxiety can be romantic or platonic, No beta we die like the original creativity, Panic Attacks, Sort Of, Trauma, a little bit of, i was getting real tired, its fun, kind of, logan helps, real bad, until it isnt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21546619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedSkiesAtMorning/pseuds/RedSkiesAtMorning
Summary: Patton and Virgil have discovered that the sides can fuse with each other and suggest that Roman and Logan try it. Roman is skeptical and hesitant, but eventually agrees. To say that things don't go as planned is an understatement.aka Roman and Logan fuse and it stirs up some trauma.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Morality | Patton Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Logic | Logan Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders
Comments: 28
Kudos: 264





	An All-Consuming Emptiness

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello, it's me! This is a headcanon I've had knocking around in my brain for a while and I figured it's about time I wrote for it. It was super fun to write, though. The last... third(???) I wrote when I was kind of tired so I hope it's not too cringy or yuck or something
> 
> Without further ado, I hope you enjoy the story!

“As fun as that sounds, Pat, I’m not entirely sold on the idea,” Roman said. He shifted in his seat at one end of the sofa, gaze fixed onto the moral side across from him.

“Aw, come on, Ro!” Patton leaned forwards from where he was sitting. A smile shone bright on his face as he shot a glance at Virgil. Roman knew where this was going. “When Virgil and I fused for the first time, it was by accident. It was scary at first -- really scary -- but we managed to find a balance and calm down and now I feel like we understand each other a lot better! Like how I know about some of his limits now and I can respect them easier, or what kinds of things help him when he’s anxious, or-- or--”

Virgil looked away, brushing his bangs in front of his eyes. He turned sideways in his chair next to the couch. “Yeah, I think he gets it, Pat. You were saying?”

“Right! Roman,” he said. “I was thinking--” his grin managed to get even wider “--that you could try fusing with Logan!”

“Logan?”

“Yeah, Logan!”

The side in question seemed somewhat confused.

“If you don’t mind my inquiring,” he began. “Why am I your image of an ideal counterpart for a fusion with Roman? We are undeniably very different. In both mannerisms and personality.”

“Exactly!”

“Exactly?” Logan contemplated for a moment. “Based on your earlier tangent about learning about Virgil and his limits and such, I suppose I can see where you’re coming from.” He turned his attention to the creative side. At face value, Roman seemed neutral on the whole conversation, but Logan could have sworn he saw the other’s jaw tighten. “I would not object to an attempt at fusing with him. It would be a very interesting experience, in my opinion. One that I would appreciate researching, but Roman would have to agree to it.”

“It’s settled, then!” Patton was practically bouncing with excitement.

“Uh, no,” Roman cut in. “I haven’t agreed to anything.” Virgil watched the exchange with narrowed eyes. Fiddling with the sleeves of his hoodie, he decided he should speak up on this.

“Look, Pat, your intentions are good, but if Princey really doesn’t want to, then, maybe we should… I don’t know, leave him be? I just mean that it’s a really personal thing, what you’re suggesting. It should be up to him, right?”

“Right,” Patton said. “But our fusion thing was kind of unexpected. And sure it was kinda terrifying for a moment, but it was just for that moment! It can seem really scary at first, but it gets better! Roman, if you try, maybe you’ll see that it’s not as bad as I think you think it is.” Roman was about to answer when Virgil cut in again.

“Remember though, it’s up to you.”

“I agree,” Logan said. “It would not be ideal for you to be uncomfortable.”

Roman took a second to think about it, silently observing the others’ expressions. Virgil seemed genuinely concerned for him, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate it, but… Patton was looking at him with those puppy dog eyes of his, practically sparkling with a silent plea. And Logan. Just by looking at him, no one would be able to figure out what he was thinking, but Roman thought he saw a flash of what looked like hope in his eyes.

That decided it.

He sighed, long and slow.

“Fine,” he said. “We can try it.”

Patton squealed with excitement. Roman averted his eyes.

Virgil had convinced Patton to give the other two some privacy.

Said other two stood awkwardly in the living room of the Mindscape, not saying much of anything. A solid two minutes passed by before one of them tried to break the crushing silence.

“Roman, you’re allowed to back out, I won’t mi--”

“No, I said I’ll do it, so I’ll do it.”

And the silence was back. It filled every corner of the room to the brim, pressing down between them. Roman tried to steel himself. Logan as well. The latter was the first to speak again.

“I suppose we should start then--?”

“I suppose we should.”

A pause.

“Alright. Whenever you’re ready.”

Roman’s gut wrenched, he had a hard time keeping his expression neutral. Those words implied that he could ever be ready. This risk he was taking would end up in flames, but he’d signed up for it already; he couldn’t very well back out now.

Both of them stepped in close to each other. Their hands were almost brushing, their gazes couldn’t have been locked more tightly with iron chains. Roman could see that Logan’s eyes weren’t the same rich brown as Thomas’ but a colder, more desaturated colour. A blue-grey hue that was almost infectious in its intensity. That intensity made the lurking fear in Roman’s stomach writhe.

Logan noticed the other’s eyes as well. Streaks of captivating greens invaded the warm reddish-brown of Roman’s eyes. Then it was the freckles scattered across his cheeks, barely hidden by rubbed-off concealer. If the logical side wanted to trace his fingers over them, he wouldn’t say anything about it. Just then, Roman noticed one more thing.

Logan had a few inches on him. He wasn’t amused.

He swallowed, an uncomfortable mixture of anxiety and embarrassment creeping up to settle as the heat in his cheeks, his hitched breath. He was suddenly very certain that if he were to stop paying attention to it, his breathing would stop altogether.

Logan tensed, barely noticeable but still there, before inching ever so slightly closer and for a second, Roman’s uncertainty faded away. He took Logan’s hand in his own, sliding his other one over Logan’s collar to rest on his shoulder. The action was reciprocated with an arm around his waist, warm and reassuring. There was an electric current there, running wild between them; a closed circuit linking them together. Before they knew it, there was no longer any sort of gap between them, their bodies pressed up against each other. They weren’t just pressed together physically, no.

Their minds began winding around together, the borders of feelings and thoughts becoming hazy. Roman could feel a path, a bridge slowly manifest between them. Taking a deep breath, he ventured forth into the halls of Logan’s mind.

He was met with a cool, discerning, analytical mindset; grounded, set firmly in reality, brimming with potential, and the looming wish of being listened to and taken seriously. Roman marveled at the archival, structured system of Logan’s brain. Comparable to a library, with figurative walls lined with books and files, catalogues and biographies, chronological lists of every activity their host had ever engaged in, some papers torn and faded, crumbling and brittle, but freely accessible while they could still be recalled. Pushed far to the back, though, a restricted section of sorts. He couldn’t seem to find his way there, the entire system seemed to be trying to keep him away. A new link snapped into place and Roman knew that area to be off limits. Those were feelings-y related things. Best not to go rummaging in there.

The wonder of the experience had almost completely masked Roman’s fear of it.

Almost.

He was suddenly aware that the bridge to get into Logan’s mind hadn’t been a two-way street when he’d crossed. He felt a presence in the back of his mind, wandering through the shifting royal halls of the castle that was his own brain. There was a hand running along a stone wall, someone looking around, astounded by the architecture, the detail set into something that wasn’t even real. Logan looked at shimmering tapestries hung from the ceiling, depicting Roman’s dreams for Thomas, the hope encompassed in each and every thread of fabric, the beauty of every aspiration captured perfectly, eternally, in the images. Logan followed them until he came to a doorway, ornate, inlaid with gold, swirling patterns. He pushed it open, finding a room with a high ceiling, chandeliers filled with crystals and candles hanging down, sending rainbows arcing across the floor. Statues lined the walls, intricately carved, bearing the likenesses of their friends. Logan walked up to the one of him, finding a scroll laid on a pedestal at its feet. On the front in slanted, looping handwriting was his name. The scroll was bound with a simple indigo ribbon, shimmering and smooth. He reached out to it, but before he could make contact, it unfurled. With a quick glance, he found that it contained notes about him. He figured he should move on before he invaded Roman’s privacy so he kept walking. He noticed that there was a statue neither of Roman, nor of Remus, but dismissed the thought.

At the other end of the room was another door, this one much simpler. Made of wood, it appeared unassuming. Logan might have not even noticed it if it weren’t for its placement. And the cracks in the stone, snaking out from where it was situated. An odd feeling pushed its way into his chest, giving him quite an illogical thought. That crack wasn’t just physical -- or as physical as one could get in someone else’s mind -- but this was a crack in Roman’s very psyche. Against his better judgement, he pushed it open. He was met with a very different sight from the one before.

A throne room. It was dark, no light to be seen. Every surface was coated with dust, the colours all dull and greyed. Below it all, Logan could still see all the details of the room. The floor shone with vibrant shades of pink, spiraling and twisting like currents of water flowing through each other, threads of minty green woven through the streams. Ornate, stone-carved pillars rose high to the ceiling, which was covered in painting, masterful in quality. He couldn’t quite tell what they depicted, his gaze clouded perhaps by dust, perhaps by something else. Along the walls where tall, stained glass windows, that no doubt would have cast the room in millions of colours, had there been light outside. The images the glass made though, he still could not decipher. It put him off that he couldn’t understand them. He exhaled and stifled his frustration, turning instead to the end of the room.

On an elevated platform sat a throne. It was crafted from gold and silver, embellished with rubies and emeralds alike. The seat itself was plush, pink in colour with pale green threads woven throughout, not unlike the floor. He would have been in awe from the craftsmanship, but something else caught his attention instead.

The throne had been rent in two, a rift running through the floor from where it had been sliced in half. An energy Logan couldn’t describe radiated out from it. All he knew was that it was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong--

And that’s how it all came crashing down.

With a final snap, setting their connection completely into place, their forms glowed and merged into one. That feeling alone was enough to force Roman’s fear to all come hurtling back, rushing him down, pulling him into its depths as waves pummeled at him from all sides. Their minds had merged together, and with Roman’s half spiraling, Logan got dragged down with him, forced under the surface through their link.

_ Too much, it’s all too much, it’s like-- like-- like-- _

_ Like what? _

_ It’s like-- _

The throne room flickered, images of the archives overtaking it, but the mental rifts were spreading too quickly. They followed the new fusion into the halls of the library and back to the castle as their mind fell back and forth.

It was so hard to make sense of anything; whose thoughts belonged to whom? Were they still Roman and Logan? Or someone else entirely? Their -- his? -- mind was racing far too fast, crumbling and crashing down far too quickly for any answers to be grasped. They sat on the ground, nails digging into their own flesh, tears pouring from all four of their mismatched eyes, as their surroundings flashed in and out of existence.

_ What is it like? What’s wrong?! _

_ This. It’s so much like-- _

A wall of some invisible force slammed into them, sending them sprawling to the ground. Ancient feelings, left bottled up and discarded, came flying back to ram into them at full force, running loose inside their thoughts. The half that belonged to Logan tried to calm down, rationalize it, find a way out, but was inevitably pulled back into the riptide, thrust down even deeper than before. It was then that he finally felt it.

An all-consuming emptiness, a severance that was ever-present, eternal, inescapable. A gaping maw-like void sucking them down, down, down, tearing them apart and stitching them back together again, over and over and over and--

_ It’s too much like-- _

_ Like? _

_ Before. _

Before.

When the severance wasn’t there, when the void didn’t exist, when there was something-- someone there to fill that gap, when the agonizing lack of wholeness, unity, hadn’t yet sprouted into snarling, blackened thorns that twisted around his neck at every waking hour, spreading, spreading until they encroached into his dreams, his nightmares, his very being--

It was so much like before his very being had been torn in half, when emptiness didn’t define him, didn’t even exist in him.

They both remembered when the person before Roman had been whole, with bright, wide, heterochromatic eyes -- one a vibrant pink, the other a minty green -- with streaks of silver and gold in his hair, shining like a crown when the light hit just right.

They both remembered when discord had planted itself into his soul for the first time, the words of hate, fear, disgust, all sowing themselves into his psyche, causing the first crack, the first imbalance in his mind.

They remembered when he talked to himself for the first time -- not just thinking out loud, but two sides of himself arguing, arguing, incessantly arguing and never shutting up ever again. Chirality set in, carving itself into the fabric of his very being, and he was never right, never symmetrical ever again. He never spoke of it. It was his little secret.

They remembered when the imbalance began to be unbearable, the pressure of his monstrous, not-so-little secret taking its toll, they remembered when he had an episode in front of the other sides, the horror on their faces. The conversation with himself, speaking of horrible, horrible things, and the writhing in his stomach, the sickening feeling of something being irrevocably wrong.

They remembered when he ran back to his room, tears streaming down his face because they hated him, he knew they did, they hated him. He was a monster, disgusting, not right, never right, no matter what he tried to do. His bad thoughts were sick and twisted, his good thoughts never good enough to make up for them, never good enough to balance them out, just never good enough, never, never good enough.

They remembered when he looked into the mirror that evening. The bright pink and the minty green shifted to darker tones, ruby and emerald. The silver and gold in his hair became more defined, separated, looking less like a crown and more like a broken halo.

Then they remembered the pain.

Then they remembered the screams.

They remembered when one became two.

They remembered the feeling of being somehow more wrong than they already were.

The feeling of being lost, cold, afraid, alone-- more than alone.

Then they remembered the all-consuming emptiness, the severance that would be ever-present, eternal, inescapable from that moment on.

They remembered finding links into each other’s minds, little intuitions, shreds of knowledge about what the other was doing, thinking, saying.

They remembered when they decided to shut them down. Destroy themselves completely,

They remembered when he became Roman and Remus.

They remembered how Roman could never quite cope with losing his other half not once, but twice. Could never quite cope with the void of where his brother used to be. Could never quite cope with how much he despised himself through all of it.

They remembered when he decided to bury it all behind an intricate facade, a mask of red and gold and white.

They remembered how he caged the emptiness, locking it away, hiding it behind being overbearing, overzealous, overconfident.

They remembered how he ignored it for years, and years, and years.

Finally, they remembered how terrified Roman was when Patton suggested that he willingly throw himself into being one with someone else again. How he knew that it might tear the wound open again, pour all the trauma out for the world to see. How he thought that maybe with Logan it might be okay. How wrong he was.

How wrong he is.

And then they were back.

Logan and Roman sat on the living room floor. The creative side’s quiet sobs sounded like thunder in Logan’s ears.

Roman could barely think. He was aware only of the buzzing in his ears. The buzzing below his skin. The buzzing of the emptiness on the edges of his awareness. The cold lack of an other half.

Logan was aware of even less, the shock too much for him. He could barely make sense of it anymore. The quiet stretched out between the two for quite some time, the only sound came from Roman’s faint crying.

It felt like an eternity before either of them came to their senses.

Logan shifted in his seat, finally processing everything he had just borne witness to. The first new thought that passed through his head was of Roman and how he had been silent about this for so long. How he had kept this locked away inside himself. How he had, however reluctantly, accepted the offer of fusing for the first time. Was it perhaps a cry for help after an eternity of silence? He recalled Roman’s thought that maybe fusing with him, Logan, of all people, wouldn’t be so bad.

He wondered distantly what he’d done to earn someone’s trust like that.

He realized, not so distantly, that however badly he was feeling was likely nothing compared to the grief, the pain that had all come rushing back to the creative side after so long of holding it back.

So Logan moved. He shifted until he was seated next to Roman, curled in on himself, shaking with sobs that slowly grew more violent, but stayed near-inaudible.

Hesitantly, he held up one hand and placed it on the other’s back. He rubbed his thumb over the fabric, hoping that his intentions got through. He considered speaking, showing the other a technique to help calm him down, but remembered one of the lessons they’d all learned with Patton. People need to feel their emotions to deal with them, even the ‘bad’ ones. Besides, before he even had a chance to voice any of his thoughts, Roman turned to him, face streaked with tears, and hugged him.

Logan closed his eyes and returned the embrace.

They sat there for a long time. Neither of them could tell if minutes or hours passed.

There, Logan finally let himself feel. If the only thing that came from shutting feelings away was this, perhaps he could finally let himself let go. Allow himself into the restricted section of his library, as it were. He would need to learn about it all, but he figured learning was what he was best at. Maybe he could do it, live with it, with a little bit of help.

Roman finally let himself let go, too, let himself feel the emptiness. Finally let himself accept that there was nothing he could do to block it out, not really, but that maybe he could survive, live with it, with a little bit of help.

A small link between them, one that never quite left when they unfused, told them that maybe they could try to work it out together.

At the start of this whole event, Patton had mentioned that he and Virgil had learned new things about each other, limits and the like, and now they knew how to help the other more easily. To say that Logan learned new things was an understatement, but he and Roman had seemed to be finding a balance with each other, before it all figuratively went down the drain. It seemed fair to say that they knew the other better.

The two of them could maybe, just maybe, work to rebuild, now that things had crumbled to the ground. Maybe, just maybe, Logan could work to stop shutting himself down, ignoring and casting away his emotions. And maybe, just maybe, Roman could stop dwelling in the limbo that came from ignoring the Before, and could finally start living in the After.

And maybe, just maybe, it would all get better.

**Author's Note:**

> HEEEEEEEE there ya go, hope you enjoyed it. Please let me know if you find any mistakes or something because I didn't really go through and proofread too much. I don't wanna sound like one of those people online who are desperate for any sort of validation but I am desperate for any sort of validation so if u wanted to leave a comment or something, it would be much much much much much appreciated.
> 
> Cya later!!


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